Category Archives: Microsoft Windows 10

Sometimes security is on the border of being ridiculous. Modern Windows 10 is very anxious when connecting to guest-access allowed, readonly Samba shares, Here’s how to allow “insecure” guest logons for stand-alone computers. The same is true when configuring a GPO.

While trying to log in on our Novell servers using Client for OES 2 SP4 IR7a on Windows 10 1709, I was greeted with:

A required network service has not started.
Please check your error log for details.

The third reply of this post gave me a clue, simply run setup.exe one more time and reboot.

Uninstallation of IR7a still gives me error 0x80070005. The Registry settings in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Novell was accessible to me as a regular user. Maybe the client’s uninstaller is complaining about rights in the filesystem.

Running setup.exe or yourscript.cmd from an elevated Command Prompt window eliminated all my problems. Search for “Command Prompt” on the start menu and hold down Ctrl+Shift when you click on the menu item. Simply right-clicking on yourscript.cmd and selecting “Run as administrator” proved to be insufficient. Creating HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Novell manually might also set things straight.

Error 0x800F081F while installing .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 10 might be due to corporate WSUS servers not allowing such updates.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU in the Windows registry and set UseWUServer to 0 (zero). Restart the Windows Update service (net stop wuauserv & net start wuauserv) and retry installing .NET Framework 3.5. Set UseWUServer back to 1 (one) and restart the Windows Update service.

One or more of the recent updates for Windows 10 rendered my laptop incapable of communicating with the outside world. The Windows Firewall failed to run due to Base Filtering Engine not being able to run either. It’s the dreaded “Error 5: Access denied” error message all over again. Windows 10 also thought it was not activated, which is plain wrong. And no, I haven’t changed any hardware, save upgrading the wireless NIC in May last year. Running sfc /scannow with elevated privileges found nothing wrong. Restoring the system to the state prior to the latest updates made the network and firewall subsystems running again. All is well. What a mess.

The Office 365 instance installed on a student’s laptop showed signs of not being activated and in need of an update. Clicking on any of the small buttons below the ribbon made no difference. Running Office updates manually from “File → Account → Update” gave us an error message: 30125-28 (404).

Running sfc /scannow with elevated rights managed to repair enough of the corruption to allow Office 365 to continue working.

Why are modern “cloud” software so fragile? Why are Dropbox and Google Drive far superior to the equivalent of Microsoft? Why is OneDrive for Business more on the order of OneDrive from Hell?

Yesterday, a student installed Autodesk Revit 2018 on his Windows 10 x64 laptop. He then upgraded to Revit 2018.1. After entering the licensing details, Revit crashed. Installing the latest drivers from nVidia, currently at version 385.41, and rebooting the laptop saved us from any more grief.

A couple of KBs, KB2977759 and KB2952664, related to the dreadful Appraiser stuff, appeared in our WSUS instance this week. The former just made it on my list of KBs one should avoid. Both was promptly declined.

Earlier this week Microsoft released another batch of Windows updates. Among them are KB3123862. As usual, the title displayed by Windows Update gives no clue to what this update actually does: “Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3123862)”. Clicking on the More information link reveal the following:

Updated capabilities to upgrade Windows 8.1 and Windows 7

This update adds capabilities to some computers that lets users easily learn about Windows 10 or start an upgrade to Windows 10.

“Easily learn about Windows 10”? “Start an upgrade to Windows 10”? I have an experimental laptop at work where I learn all I can about Windows 10 and the applications we use at work. That’s all I need at the moment.

No, thank you. I don’t want to install Windows 10 until I’m willing. Needless to say, this update was never installed on my Windows 7 computer at home, and the update was promptly hidden.

I feel really sorry for the computer illiterate. How are they supposed to know what’s good or bad for them?

The list of bad KBs when it comes to Windows 10 and its intrusiveness is expanded to cover: